Book review

“Eat salad and die!” – An interesting and inspiring tale about linguistic fieldwork

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Linguist on the loose scaled

As a person with around a million different allergies and an aspiration to do linguistic fieldwork one day, I got extremely excited when I read the quoted passage from the title of this review: “Eat salad and die!”. For an experienced field linguist this might be obvious (what do I know?), but I have often wondered whether the number of food allergies I have would stand in the way between me and my possible future prospects of doing fieldwork one day. Luckily Lyle Campbell was able to prove me wrong and restore my hopes in his book “Linguist on the Loose – Adventures and misadventures in fieldwork”.

In his book, Campbell describes most aspects of linguistic fieldwork through … ↪

Book review: Before the Linguistics Wars, was there peace? An edition of the correspondence between Hugo Schuchardt (linguist) and Gaston Paris (philologist)

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Maanen i min kuffert

Perhaps, dear reader, you are at a linguistics department, while your friend – studying very similar courses at a different university – is in a philology department. Some departments used to call themselves one way but later renamed themselves, such as Harvard’s Department of Linguistics, originally Comparative Philology. What differences are there and why does the name seem to matter? A highly readable and enjoyable article containing both qualitative and quantitative data tackled this issue over three decades ago – Margaret Winters & Geoffrey Nathan’s 1992 “First he called her a philologist and then she insulted him” (a worthwhile longer account can be found in Momma 2012).

And a likewise highly readable and enjoyable book has existed since … ↪

Book review: When language grows larger than reality

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Lingoblog forsider 1

Review of Mikkel Toxvig. 2025. Magt og overmod – Om sprogets storhedsvanvid i ledelse og arbejdsliv [Power and Hubris – On the Megalomania of Language in Leadership and Working Life.] Copenhagen: Samfundslitteratur.

The inflation in grocery prices in 2025 has probably caused more than a few of us to place the minced beef back in the freezer section. Perhaps sometimes with the thought lingering in the back of our minds: whether the growing gap between those who have more than enough and those who don’t have much at all might sow the seeds of aggression; whether we are growing too far apart. Inflation – and the consequences of inflation – is also the subject of Mikkel Toxvig’s book Magt og … ↪

Language in your hands: The guide to creating your very own language

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Conlang bog e1763121026399

uto aveyalaza
for my students

This is what can be read as one of the first things in Jessie Peterson’s (née Sams) book How to Create a Language: The Conlang Guide. You won’t be able to find the origin of the language in italics in any common resource. You can try putting it into Google Translate  and have it detect a language for you, but the translation will most certainly not result in “for my students”. This is because the sentence is not written in any of the languages spoken in the world, but rather one of Peterson’s constructed languages (conlangs).

Conlangs are languages created by people for a variety of reasons, be they aesthetic, for a literary project, … ↪

Shaetlan: a young language with old roots – a Nordic language now officially recognized

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Skaermbillede 2025 10 29 112859

A Danish review of the book can be read here.

Shetland is an archipelago and it belongs administratively to Scotland. Scotland belongs administratively to the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom is liberated from the European Union, but it used to be part of the EU. The British do not feel European, at least a small majority, so they brexited. The Scots do not feel English, but they are not allowed to vote for independence. The Shetlanders do not feel Scottish, and there are a fair few who would like to have Home Rule, somewhat like the Faroe Islands have within the Danish Kingdom. There are some 23,000 people in Shetland (yes, IN Shetland, not ON Shetland). They have their … ↪

Questions or answers in a book with a questionable title?

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Skaermbillede 2025 01 29 kl. 15.24.01

Who is Paul Anthony Jones, the author of the book under review? Is he related to John Paul Jones, the keyboard player in Led Zeppelin? Or was it bass? Why does this book have a question on the cover and not a statement, as all ‘normal’ books? Is it the only question discussed in the book, or are there also other ones that are discussed? If so, does the author provide answers to those questions?

Why didn’t the author finish his university studies in linguistics, to the dismay of his teachers? Why did he then become a freelance writer, who writes about languages? Is it true what he writes about this, that he does not regret the choice, and that … ↪

Who Understands Comics? Or: How I learned that I don’t draw bad comics, I just read backwards

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image001 1

To my delight and misfortune, I have been making comics since my 2017 Erasmus plus stay at Aarhus University.

I was never very good at drawing, but someone once told me that I was good at making circles, so I stuck with it. When I shared my early comics with my family, I got mixed reactions. In a WhatsApp correspondence, one family member resorted to “wow”, while the other offered their interpretation: “charming illustrations! I suggest not to try to understand the humor. It’s cool that there is a recurring character that repeats throughout. It creates empathy. Even if I do not understand the humor.” 4 years later I was still at it, and sent some more comics to my … ↪